저자: 미상 · 외국인
요약 보기
ARK Invest의 장기 투자 실패 사례 10선 중 상위 종목들을 분석한 영상이다. 결론: ARK의 대표 성공(테슬라·엔비디아)에도 불구하고 ARK 펀드 대부분은 S&P500에 뒤처졌으며, 실패 종목들은 구조적 문제가 큰 것으로 평가된다. ARK ETF 전체 성과 비교: 설정 이후 평균 수익률 86% vs S&P500 128%, 평균 약 42%p 하회. 실패 종목 1) UiPath: 2021년 IPO 고점 이후 약 79% 하락. ARR 성장률이 분기 12%→7%→4%로 둔화, 영업·마케팅 지출 감축 시 매출 성장이 붕괴. 자동화 적용 범위가 좁고 유지보수 부담이 커 고가 가격 정책이 영업을 어렵게 함. 실패 종목 2) Twilio: 팬데믹 기간 주가 3배 이상 상승 후 하락, ARK 매입가 대비 약 76% 손실. 사업 모델 자체는 양호하나 매입 타이밍이 문제였다는 평가. 실패 종목 3) 3D Systems: 산업용 3D 프린터 기업. 금속 분말 비용이 일반 금속의 약 5배로 산업 적용 경제성이 낮고, 반복된 기대 사이클에도 매출 감소와 지속 흑자 실패. ARK 손실 약 76%. 실패 종목 4) Velo3D: SPAC 합병 상장, 3D 프린팅 특성상 같은 문제로 ARK 손실 약 85%. 실패 종목 5) 2U: 온라인 학위 프로그램 기업. USC 로스리어 교육대학원의 US News 순위 조작(입학률 데이터 왜곡) 스캔들이 드러나 집단소송 중. 스캔들 공개 후 주가 약 70% 하락, 매출 감소·적자 확대. ARK는 2022년 4월 스캔들 당시 약 6천만 달러 보유 중 매도하지 않고 오히려 매수. 실패 종목 6) Invitae: 유전자 검사 기업. 고비용·높은 위양성률, 지속적 적자, 주가 1달러 미만 '현금 주식' 분류. ARK 손실 약 93%. 실패 종목 7) Berkeley Lights(현 Phenomix): 세포 분석 장비 Beacon(대당 약 200만 달러). 2021년 Scorpion Capital 공매도 리포트(목표가 0달러)에서 오류율 문제 제기. ARK는 해명 트윗에서 장비 오류 가능성을 사실상 인정했으나 이후에도 추가 매수. 현금 약 3천만 달러, 분기 약 2천만 달러 소진, 파산 위기. ARK 손실 약 99%. 핵심 비판: ARK의 투자 철학인 '라이트 법칙(Wright's Law, 생산량 두 배마다 단위 비용 20% 하락)'은 실제로 잘 성립하지 않는 유사과학에 가깝다는 주장. 3D 프린팅 금속 원료비처럼 구조적으로 비용이 내려가지 않는 경우에도 낙관적 가정을 유지하고 있다는 것. 영상은 ARK 운용자산 약 140억 달러, 직원 100명 이상 규모임에도 리스크 관리가 부실했다고 평가한다. 영상 말미에 자체 플랫폼(Tendies 앱) 홍보가 포함됨.
다듬은 글
Katie Wood's ARK Invest gained notoriety for its long-term stake in Tesla, which has been one of the best-performing stocks in the entire market over the past decade. Wood also credits his recent success to the firm's long-term position in Nvidia. She started buying shares of this semiconductor manufacturer many years ago, when their price, including splits, was only $5 apiece.
Picking the two best stocks in the entire market may seem like an impressive achievement, but we must consider that ARK has invested in many hundreds of companies over the years. Due to the very nature of ARK's investment strategy, which is focused on disruptive technologies, it is to be expected that only a few will become huge successes and most will fail.
To appreciate Katie Wood's investment acumen, we must also look at her failures. ARK Invest currently offers five ETFs that were launched between 2014 and 2021 . Most of them have significantly lagged the S&P 500 since inception. On average, its funds have delivered an 86% return since inception, compared to the S&P 500's 128% return over the same periods.
Thus, ARK lags the S&P 500 by an average of 42%. Remember, this is despite the fact that ARK held Tesla and Nvidia shares for most of the time. Most of the stocks Wood chose underperformed the market, significantly so. This offset the success of its few successful solutions, such as Tesla and Nvidia.
To fully understand Wood's investment prowess, or lack thereof, we need to take a deeper look at the failed assets. In this video, we take a look at the 10 worst stocks owned by ARK ETFs today. These stocks have experienced a decline of 76% to 99% compared to the average ARK purchase price. According to CathiesArk.com, we are only considering stocks that ARK Invest owns at the time of this video recording.
There were many other positions that ARK got rid of at huge losses . For example, ARK Invest was a major investor in the now- bankrupt crypto bank Silvergate. She dumped the entire position when the bank collapsed earlier this year, with huge losses . Before we get to the worst of Katie Wood's promotions, a quick word from our sponsors at Tendies.
The Tendies app for iOS and desktop is the first serious attempt to integrate trading tools with a social media platform, and it is 100% free. It has everything from an earnings report calendar, exclusive research from their expert analysts, to a Reddit-linked news feed, options streams, and an options profit calculator.
Essentially, it has all the real-time information you need to sift through the market for investment opportunities or stay on top of stocks you already own. You can even link your brokerage account to the platform to see what leading Reddit communities are saying about your positions , or if there is any unusual activity with options on them.
Register a free account and get access to real-time options streams. Competing products charge $70 per month for this. Be sure to click the link in the description to get this free options flow data and take advantage of the market chaos. Of the 10 worst stocks in Katie Wood's portfolio, we've already made separate videos about two of them: Ginkgo Bioworks and Teladoc.
Both videos are linked in the description below. So in this video, we're going to focus on eight stocks that we haven't talked about before. The tenth worst stock in Wood's portfolio is UiPath. ARK Invest lost 76% of its investments, based on their average value. UiPath went public at the peak of the tech bubble in 2021 and has lost 79% of its value since then.
ARK acquired them shortly after the IPO and rode with them all the way down. So, what is UiPath and why has their stock performed so poorly ? UiPath is a software company that creates applications for robotic process automation. These programs allow office workers to automate mundane tasks such as searching documents and creating reports.
If done right, it can save employees time, allowing them to focus on more creative and useful tasks. Historically, they have grown their revenue very quickly, which allowed them to go public at a premium valuation of $35 billion . For software companies like UiPath, the primary revenue metric is annual recurring revenue, or ARR.
ARR reflects the annual cost of all customer subscriptions . In 2021, their ARR grew at an incredibly fast pace— about 12% per quarter. However, it's worth noting that their sales and marketing expenses were about the same as their ARR. Thus, almost all of their income was spent on sales efforts to grow the business.
In 2022, they began reducing sales and marketing costs. This caused their ARR growth to slow to around 7% per quarter. In the first calendar quarter of 2023, it slowed to a meager 4%. So, their income growth depends on spending huge amounts of money on salespeople. As soon as they cut the sales force, revenue growth collapsed.
But if UiPath is really so great and can make employees much more productive, why is it so hard for them to attract new customers? Why do n't customers just go to them? UiPath automation programs are not a magic panacea that automates any task. They are difficult to maintain and are only appropriate for a small subset of workflows.
In many cases, setting up and maintaining a UiPath application can take longer than doing the work manually. On the UiPath Reddit page, many users complain about how finicky it becomes due to integration with the company's other software. One minor change in one of the programs can cause UiPath to crash , after which the work has to be redone.
There is often a problem of mismatch between expectations and reality, where people think that UiPath will do all the work for them, but eventually realize that constantly fixing bugs takes more time. Only a very small fraction of tasks can be effectively automated using UiPath. Salespeople are forced to spend a lot of time working with potential corporate customers to identify appropriate use cases.
Because the use cases are very limited, UiPath is forced to charge very high prices to generate acceptable revenue. The pricing structure is very complex and can run into many thousands of dollars per year for each process. The high price makes the sellers' job even more difficult. As investors gradually realized how difficult and expensive it was to grow this business, the share price collapsed.
The next worst- performing stock is Twilio, which has also fallen 76% since its acquisition by Ark. Twilio is a software company that allows businesses to communicate with their customers en masse via email and text messages. For example, fast food chain Panera Bread uses Twilio to send customers order confirmations and notifications via SMS.
Twilio does this entire process automatically. Without Twilio, a Panera employee would have to send each message manually, which would be impossible. Unlike most of the other companies we'll look at in this video, Twilio is actually a pretty good company with a viable business model. Their product is easily scalable and relevant to a wide range of corporate clients.
In this particular investment, the problem wasn't stock selection, it was timing. During the pandemic " tech bubble," Twilio's stock price more than tripled. They did experience a small boost as companies needed more ways to communicate with customers remotely, but it wasn't enough to justify the huge increase in share price.
With the end of the pandemic, Twilio's stock price has returned to earth. ArchInvest bought the stock near its peak and watched it fall completely. The next stock on the list is 3D Systems , which also brought Arc Invest a loss of 76%. They produce 3D printers. These are large, expensive systems used by industrial companies, not individual amateurs.
ARK considers 3D printing a breakthrough innovation and has even published a "white paper" about its revolutionary potential. Theoretically, 3D printing can increase the speed and efficiency of manufacturing new products because there is no need to create a new assembly line for a new design. The problem is that for the vast majority of industrial applications, 3D printing is much more expensive.
For example, 3D printing of metal objects requires the use of metal powder. Metal powder particles are fused together using a laser. This is a complex process that takes a lot of time, and powdered metal is five times more expensive than regular metal. So, for most industrial applications, 3D printing has always been and will be more expensive than traditional methods.
3D printing was invented in the 1980s, and 3D Systems Corp. there are almost as many . There were several hype cycles where investors got excited about the revolutionary potential of the technology and the stock price soared, but expectations were not met and the stock always fell. The company has suffered from declining revenues in recent years and has still not been able to achieve sustainable profitability.
Next on the list is another 3D printing company called Velo3D, which went public through a merger with a SPAC in 2021 . This company's stock crashed for the same reasons as 3D Systems Corp. ARK lost approximately 85% on Velo3D. Next on the list is for-profit education company 2U, whose shares have fallen 91% compared to ARK's average underlying value.
2U partners with universities to implement online education programs. 2U is responsible for technology and advertising, while the university provides the actual teaching. 2U is a long-standing asset of Ark Invest. In 2020, Katie Wood called 2U a great example of innovative companies that gained momentum during the pandemic.
According to a recent class action lawsuit, 2U's apparent success may have been the result of an elaborate scheme to defraud students by overpaying for low-quality online degrees. 2U began operations in 2008 when it partnered with the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California to offer online master's degree programs.
As a technology provider, 2U received 60% of tuition revenue, while USC received the remaining 40%. The most authoritative ranking of US universities is published by US News and World Report. A university's ranking in US News is a significant factor in students' willingness to apply and their willingness to pay for tuition.
The higher the university's rating, the more applicants it attracts and the higher tuition fees it can charge. Before starting cooperation with 2U, the Rossier School ranked 38th in the country, which is not bad, but not impressive. In the first year of cooperation with 2U, their score inexplicably jumped to 28th place.
And by 2018, their ranking had improved even more —to 10th place. With such a high ranking, demand increased and they were able to increase tuition to $100,000 per student. This allowed both USC and 2U to make millions in profits. An important criterion that affects the rating of an educational institution is the level of student enrollment.
If the university is good, many students will want to apply to it. The number of places is limited, so this results in a very low enrollment rate. The lower the enrollment rate, the better for the ranking. The year before the partnership with 2U, the Rossier School of Education at USC had an enrollment rate of about 50%.
The following year, this figure dropped to only 10%. So, what happened? Did they really become five times more competitive , or was something else happening? In 2021, USC's general counsel became concerned that the data they provided to US News may be inaccurate or misleading. So they hired an outside law firm to conduct an independent investigation.
The investigation found that USC had been misleading US News for much of the past decade. The Rossier School offered several degree programs. Some of which were more competitive than others. According to the investigation, USC provided enrollment rate data only for its most selective program, convincing US News that it was data for all of their full-time programs.
USC and 2U used their US News rankings to advertise courses, some of which cost more than $100,000 per student. Based on the rigged US News rankings, the number of students enrolled in USC's online courses skyrocketed, allowing the university and 2U to generate millions in revenue. 2U is currently being sued by former students who believe they were defrauded.
In my personal opinion, if an education company is involved in one of the biggest academic frauds of recent times, it makes its stock uninvestable. It seems most investors share the same opinion, as the stock has lost nearly 70% of its value since the scandal was exposed. 2U's revenue has been falling recently, while losses have been increasing.
It is understandable that many universities no longer want to work with this company. Ark Invest employs over 100 employees. The scandal surrounding USC was widely covered in the media. At the time the scandal broke in April 2022 , ARK owned shares worth $60 million. They either knew about this significant negative development or were negligent in not knowing about it.
Despite this, they not only failed to close their position, but also continued to buy shares, which led to predictably disastrous results. Next on the list is Invite Corp, which brought ARK a catastrophic 93% loss. Invite is a medical company that provides genetic testing to detect potential diseases.
While genetic testing sounds great in theory, it is too expensive and usually produces a very high rate of false positives. Despite the great hype in 2020 and 2021, the company failed as a business. They never made a profit. Their earnings are falling and they recently moved into the “cash stocks” category with a price tag of less than $1 per share.
And last on the list is Phenomix, formerly known as Berkeley Lights. This investment was an almost total loss for Arc Invest , as it depreciated by 99% relative to the average purchase price. The company appears to be on the verge of bankruptcy, as it has only $30 million in cash, which it is spending at a rate of $20 million per quarter.
Berkeley Lights sells a device called Beacon that can analyze cells. This can be used by pharmaceutical companies to develop new drugs. Beacon devices cost $2 million each, which is dozens of times more expensive than similar offerings on the market. But they claim that the car is so good that it justifies the price.
They started selling it in 2016 and were able to convince major pharmaceutical companies, including Amgen and Pfizer, to buy them. They went public in 2020, and their valuation skyrocketed to over $4 billion, despite revenue of only about $20 million per quarter and huge expenses. Arc Invest was one of the biggest optimists, buying up hundreds of millions of dollars worth of shares.
In September 2021, large hedge fund Scorpion Capital issued a report on Berkeley Lights with a target price of $0. They said they called former employees of Amgen, Pfizer and other Berkeley Lights clients who used the Beacon device. They said it was practically unusable because it had a high error rate—from 50 to 100%.
The machine is so useless that it sits idle most of the time, and they would never buy another one. Shortly after publishing the short report, Arc Invest posted a lengthy Twitter thread in response to these allegations. ARK stated, and I quote: “Beacon is an ambitious platform .” Its internal structure is complex and includes interconnected liquid pumps, semiconductor chips, optics, and software.
The result seems to be variability in run results , although I'm not sure whether these errors are random or systematic. Ark Invest often uses overly complex jargon, and this tweet is no exception. If we translate this tweet into human language, Ark admits that the machine makes numerous mistakes, as Scorpion Capital claimed.
This is due to the high complexity of the device. Furthermore, Ark admits that it does not know whether these errors are expected due to the natural randomness of cellular biology or are the result of a systemic problem. A system problem means that the machine simply doesn't work. If you don't even know if the machine works, why continue to risk hundreds of millions of dollars of your investors' capital by holding the stock?
After publishing the short position report, Ark continued to double down, buying more and more shares. It turned out that Scorpion Capital was right. Berkeley Lights' revenue has been consistently declining. Their losses accelerated. Their stock price has fallen by 99% and they are on the verge of bankruptcy.
For Ark Invest, this was an almost total loss. Ark Invest manages assets worth over $14 billion and has over 100 employees. Their full- time job is to identify innovative companies that will provide higher returns for their risk. So why do most of their funds perform worse than the S&P 500? To find the answer, we need to look at Katie Wood's core investment philosophy.
In her public statements and interviews, she obsessively talks about the so- called Wright Law. It was invented by an aeronautical engineer named Theodore Wright in 1936. Wright noticed that every time airplane production capacity doubled , labor costs per unit of output fell by 20%. The idea is that over time, workers and engineers gain experience that helps them innovate and become more efficient.
The problem is that Wright's law is a pseudoscience that rarely holds true in the real world. Global aircraft production today is ten times greater than it was in 1936. If Wright's law were in effect , airplanes would be almost free today, which is obviously not the case. Katie invests in many technologies that are commercially unviable today.
She assumes that costs will magically decrease in the future. But in many cases this is simply impossible. Take the example of 3D printing, which became one of its most disastrous investments. To 3D print metal parts, you need to use metal powder, which is five times more expensive than regular metal.
This is a fact that will not change. No matter how many 3D printers you produce, the raw materials will still remain too expensive for the vast majority of industrial applications. Well, friends, that concludes this video. What do you think about Arc Invest? Let us know in the comments section below. As always, thank you very much for watching, see you in the next video.
Comments 0